Day 4
This day was mostly a museum day. When I was planning the trip, I knew I wanted to go to the Ten Boom Museum in Haarlem and the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. I got to go to both this day!
It was rainy again this morning, but it didn’t last the whole day like the day before.
Haarlem! On our way to our appointment for the guided tour of the Ten Boom Museum.
I liked Haarlem and I thought it was a good place to stay! It’s a quiet charming town and it’s only a 15-minute train ride to central Amsterdam.
I liked these flowers on the bridge!
As we were walking to the Ten Boom Museum, we were following this recycling truck. We would get ahead of it while it was picking up recycling, then it would finish and move forward and get ahead of us again and then we would pass it again and it went on like this for a little bit. We eventually turned down a street that the truck didn’t turn down. ;)
We had a little bit of time before the guided tour started so we went to the Grote Markt of Haarlem to see the cool view.
St. Bavo’s church.
I had read The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom before and learned about her in school so I was really interested in visiting the house where the Ten Boom family had lived.
In order to visit the Ten Boom Museum, you have to take a guided tour. I had to book the reservations months in advance, because they have limited spots on the tours. I made sure we were going to be in Haarlem on a day when the museum was open.
It was a really good tour and I learned a lot about the Ten Boom family! We couldn’t take many pictures inside the house.
Inside the hiding place in the house. The people that the Ten Booms were hiding lived in the house normally until other people came over unexpectedly.
When that happened they would ring a bell that they could only hear inside the house and the people would run to the hiding place as quickly as possible. It was standing room only.
Obviously this hole in the wall was not there when the Ten Booms lived there. It’s like that now so we can easily see how it was then.
The entrance to the hiding place was in the cabinet on the bottom left. Although you can’t see the door, there was a door on the cabinet and other things to conceal the entrance at the time. So if someone were to inspect it, it would just look like a normal cabinet.
Casper Ten Boom, the father of Corrie and Betsie, was a watchmaker. He had a shop on the first floor and the family lived on the floors above.
I am glad we were able to visit the Ten Boom museum. It was an interesting tour and I learned a lot about what the Ten Boom family and the people they helped went through at the time.
It’s amazing that after all the hardships that the Ten Boom family experienced that Corrie preached forgiveness throughout the rest of her life.
Some buildings around Haarlem.
Haarlem!
Haarlem central train station.
After we finished the tour of the Ten Boom Museum, we needed to get to Amsterdam for our timed tickets for the Van Gogh museum.
Haarlem train station!
Amsterdam! On our way to the Van Gogh museum.
To get to the Van Gogh museum we walked past the Rijksmuseum. We ended up going here later this day.
It’s a pretty building!
We had to get timed tickets to the Van Gogh museum. We could have waited and bought tickets the day of but people online recommended buying them ahead of time because they often sell out before then.
A week or two before the trip, I was finally able to get the tickets online (when I tried before that it would never go through).
I am glad we were able to get tickets online because when we got there, there was a sign saying all of the tickets for the rest of the day were sold out.
Some of the paintings we saw at the Van Gogh museum!
Some of Van Gogh’s many self-portraits!
I didn’t take a ton of pictures here but I enjoyed visiting the museum! I like Van Gogh’s art.
Van Gogh was a pretty prolific artist. Although the majority of the museum’s art was Van Gogh, there were definitely sections with different artists.
Also it surprised me how different Van Gogh’s style of art was sometimes. I guess since I’d only seen his most famous work and those paintings were similar in style that seeing some of his lesser known work, his style was different sometimes.
Tim had wanted to get to the Rijksmuseum but we weren’t sure if we could make it there that day. Now that we knew we had some time, Tim looked online to see if they had any more tickets for the day. They had some available in about an hour. So Tim booked us tickets for the Rijksmuseum.
Since there was a little bit of time until our timed tickets to the Rijksmuseum, we decided to eat a late lunch.
I had looked up places to eat near the Van Gogh museum and found a burger place nearby that had good reviews. The burger place was Wizard of Oz themed. I didn’t get good pictures inside.
I enjoyed my burger though. I thought it was delicious!
The Burger Room, where we ate lunch.
After we ate lunch, we went to the Rijksmuseum. We only had about 1-1/2 hours there so we did a highlights tour. I also didn’t take many pictures here.
But the two paintings above are Johannes Vermeer paintings.
This library was in the Rijksmuseum. It is the oldest and largest art history library in the Netherlands.
I wish we had had some more time at the Rijksmuseum but alas we did not. But we saw a lot of cool stuff in the short amount of time we did have though!
On the streets of Amsterdam!
We headed back to Haarlem. We went to our hotel for a couple of hours until later in the evening when we attended an organ concert at St. Bavo’s Church in Haarlem.
Upon its completion, it was the largest organ in the world. The organ has been restored several times since then but still retains about 90% of the original pipes.
G.F. Handel visited the church twice to play the organ. A 10-year old Mozart also played the organ.
When I learned about the history of the organ I knew I needed to see it. As I was researching it I saw that they had organ concerts there on Tuesdays evenings during the summer. The Tuesday I was going to be there was the last concert of the season and I was really excited!
Tim and I went to the organ concert that night. It was about an hour long and it was so cool!
Looking at the back of the church.
Here’s a short clip from the organ concert! I am so glad we got to go to the concert! It was such a unique experience.
St. Bavo’s church was pretty!
The Grote Markt at night.
This was a good day! I loved all of the museums we visited this day and I’m glad we got to go to the organ concert in the evening.
Side note: I started feeling bad this day. My throat started hurting and I started losing my voice.
1 comment:
I love the Netherlands and I'm so glad you got to go explore these amazing places!
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